“GET IT TOGETHER, BIRD!”
While traveling in northern Italy, my husband and I stayed in a tiny 300-year-old house near the Alps. The landscape was stunning – among some of the most beautiful vistas I’ve ever seen in my life.
Each morning though, we awoke to the sound on a repeated banging on our kitchen window, which we quickly realized was the sound of a small bird trying to get in. Again and again and again and again – day after day after day. At first we laughed, “what a dumb bird!” - but then it started to get to me. Honestly, couldn’t it see this wasn’t working? And geez, if it would just turn around, it would have so much space and beauty to explore. Get it together, bird!!
Whelp. Maybe it got to me because I am often the bird. I, like the person in today’s parable, have been known to build houses on sand. Again, again, again.
In my spiritual life, I have repeatedly tried the same things, with the slim hope that, “maybe it will work this time.” Maybe it will work to think of God as transactional if I try it again. If I’m good, God rewards. If not, God punishes. A house built on sand. Or maybe if I find the perfect Mass to attend with the perfect music and preaching and people, I will finally have an excellent prayer life. A house built on sand. Maybe if I keep telling myself how rotten I am, God will change every thing I don’t like. A house built on sand.
I, like the bird, am drawn to things that feel well-worn and comfortable – even if I know it’s not working. But I’m sensing an invitation to turn my little wings around and look at the possibility of something different this Advent. What might it look like to gather some stones instead of sand? What might it look like to not just bang my head against the window again and again?
Maybe we’re not as far from beauty and God’s true presence as we think.
In our relationships with God, where do we feel stuck or unstable? What would it look like to try one new way of interacting with God this Advent?
Teresa Nygard
Photo credit: Unsplash